Blogocentric Formulations

Skills

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  | May 25

Prompt ▼

What is the most useless skill you have? The most valuable?

I'd say that the most valuable skill I have is my ability to adapt to whatever circumstances I find myself in. Whether it's related to the times I've been laid off, given an unexpected set of additional responsibilities at work, welcoming foster kids into our home, having to deal with home repair or auto emergencies, this whole COVID-19 situation, etc., I've always had the ability to just figure out a way forward, and to look at the situation I'm in and what I have around me, and just... figure out a way to make it work. It's something that's proven to be very useful over the years because life has a tendency to be unpredictable. It's nice to know that, no matter what's around the corner, I'll mostly likely have at least some ability to adapt to the situation and figure out a way to move forward.

On the other hand, I'd say my most useless skill is a knack for remembering random trivia. And not, like, useful trivia where I know everything there is to know about multiple categories of Trivial Pursuit, or where I'd make an awesome Jeopardy! contestant and could win some money. I mean like truly bizarre and random things like being able to name all the countries of the world, or play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (or pretty much any other famous actor) for hours and hours on end without being stumped, or being able to rattle off the U.S. President's cabinet positions and line of succession, or being able to list pi to 13+ digits. I am admittedly somewhat proud of many of these accomplishments and bits of knowledge, but there's very little use for them, and showing off that kind of knowledge often comes off as being self-important or condescending. I mean, it's not as if people at a party are just randomly like, "Hey, who can name all 50 U.S. states and their capitals?" And it's not like I'll ever be in a job interview and be asked to name an animal or a fruit/vegetable that starts with every letter of the alphabet. And yet, I still spend an enormous amount of time reading about and collecting all kinds of this random information.

The worst part of this useless skill is that all this trivia and these random facts stick in my brain, but things like requests to take out the trash, or remembering to stop and get some item on the way home from work often go in one ear and out the other. So while I can tell you all kinds of information about galaxies (their various shapes, how many stars are in them, how many galaxies are in the known universe, etc.), I have to ask my wife like three times, "What was it you needed me to bring home again?" I'm lucky she puts up with me.